MacTech Blog

Mar 06

Mobile apps offer a best practice for serving customers

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are moving rapidly toward adopting mobile apps, according to new research from Clutch (https://clutch.co/), a research, ratings, and reviews platform for business services.

Currently, 42% of SMBs have built their own mobile app, but Clutch's survey indicates that SMBs increasingly view them as a worthwhile tool to improve business operations and return on investment. Two-thirds (67%) of SMBs surveyed said they plan on having a mobile app by the end of 2017, a benchmark growth rate of over 50% over the course of the year.

SMBs gave various reasons for building mobile apps as well as identified features they particularly value. Most of those features directly relate to mobile apps' impact on improving business, particularly their ability to provide solid return on investment (ROI).

"People won't just go download your app because your business has an app," said...

What came first--the social egg or the technology chicken? It is apparent that the two exist in a feedback loop — the societal context engendering technological change and the technology, once sufficiently widespread, radically altering society.

While one can argue that the first society was agrarian, it was so only in the sense that there was no hunting, and gathering could be done with little travel, for Eden was already planted. The technology of the hunter-gatherer consists of whatever one's own hands can do or make from found materials. It extends no further than impaling or cutting implements and fire. While individual communities were small and often nomadic, in places like North America, the indigenous peoples often developed vast networks of trade and commerce. Human nature being what it is, conflict, conquest, and slavery were also woven into most of those societies.

We’ve all heard about and likely experienced the impact of the most recent Amazon S3 outage, and while it’s easy to pick on Amazon for the wide-spread fallout this outage caused, that’s not the point. Whether your business critical apps are hosted on AWS, Azure, GCP, or any other cloud or hosting platform, you need to be monitoring those apps. The impact of the AWS outage shows us how much companies rely on cloud and hosting providers, like AWS, for the critical applications their customers and employees use every day.

AlertSite data taken during the AWS outage shows an immediate 5X spike in errors and timeouts across customers apps hosted on AWS. AlertSite users received instant notification of these failures and were able to update their ‘unavailable’ pages, communicate the outage to their users, and in some cases reroute traffic to an alternate data center environment.

A new update to the “Worldwide Semiannual Mobility Spending Guide” from International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts worldwide mobility revenues to reach $1.57 trillion in 2017, an increase of 2.6% over 2016.

Purchases of mobile hardware, software, and services is expected to continue apace over the next several years, achieving a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.1% over the 2015-2020 forecast period and reaching $1.67 trillion in 2020. Connectivity services will represent the largest category of mobility spending in 2017 followed by consumer and enterprise purchases of phones, tablets, and portable PCs, according to IDC (www.idc.com).

Combined, connectivity and hardware will deliver more than 95% of all mobility revenues this year with roughly two thirds coming from the consumer market, adds the research group. Most of the remaining revenues will come from enterprise purchases of mobility services,...

An IP address is a numerical label assigned to each computer to indicate its location. IP address can also show the user’s ISP details and even disclose their physical location.

Since everyone’s IP address hides private and sensitive information, it is not wise to publically disclose it – and this is exactly what happens when people go online. Accessing any website allows the web host to see the location of the user and to even track their activity.

Users are being tracked by advertisers across all their devices, surveilled by governments, and their privacy could also be easily breached by hackers, as long as their IP address is exposed.

One of the best ways to hide an IP address is to use a VPN – such as NordVPN, which encrypts all data between a user’s computer and a VPN server into a secure tunnel. NordVPN doesn’t keep any customer logs, offers secure encryption protocols and advanced security solutions like DoubleVPN.

The “State of Digital Performance” report also found that the median bounce rate for shoppers using mobile devices was almost 58%, while tablet shoppers had a median bounce rate of almost 45%. SOASTA found that only about 1-in-5 consumers actually make purchases using their phones.

This is important because phones are a critical tool in the browsing process, but there are barriers to completing transitions on mobile sites. SOASTA says that just a 100-millisecond delay in load time can...

In its second annual Tax Season Risk Report, CyberScout (www.cyberscout.com), a data security and identity theft protection firm, reported on taxpayer attitudes about identity theft and saw a pattern of poor practices that leave much of the public vulnerable. While the IRS is taking steps that have reduced tax identity theft, taxpayers must still take ownership to protect their filings as the risks remain high.

Most Americans (58%) aren’t worried about tax fraud in spite of federal reports of 787,000 confirmed identity theft returns in 2016, totaling more than $4 billion in potential fraud. Only 35% of taxpayers demand that their preparers use two-factor authentication, which is far more secure than a single password, to protect their clients’ personal information.

Less than a fifth (18%) use an encrypted USB drive, a secure way to save important documents like tax worksheets, W-2’s, 1099’s or...

The worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 18% in 2017 to total $246.8 billion, up from $209.2 billion in 2016, according to Gartner (www.gartner.com).

The research group says the highest growth will come from cloud system infrastructure services (IaaS), which is projected to grow 36.8% in 2017 to reach $34.6 billion. Cloud application services (SaaS) is expected to grow 20.1% to reach $46.3 billion.

"The overall global public cloud market is entering a period of stabilization, with its growth rate peaking at 18% in 2017 and then tapering off over the next few years," said Sid Nag, research director at Gartner. "While some organizations are still figuring out where cloud actually fits in their overall IT strategy, an effort to cost optimize and bring forth the path to transformation holds strong promise and results for IT outsourcing (ITO) buyers.”

There is confusion over what qualifies as “the cloud,” according to a new consumer survey. Despite marking that they use at least one of several popular cloud-based applications, such as Google Drive, Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive, over 30% of consumers subsequently responded that they do not use or access information in the cloud.

Clutch (https://clutch.co/uk/seo-firms), a B2B [business-to-business] ratings and reviews firm, designed the survey to gauge consumers' knowledge and habits regarding cloud usage. When it comes to understanding which applications are part of the cloud, experts say that the confusion is understandable.

"From private cloud, managed private cloud, to in-house and public cloud, there are many different technologies which can be referred to as cloud, but are very general," said Alexander Martin-Bale, director of Cloud and Data Platforms at adaware, an anti-...

Technical recruiter Speak With A Geek (SWAG) is using its voice in the industry to raise awareness about the unique challenges faced by women in technology. The Bay Area agency hopes to educate and provide a deeper analysis into the topic of a lack of female representation in technology.

“Beginning almost at birth, girls receive subtle messaging that science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are for not for them. Everything from gendered toys, stereotypical advertisements, and even the subtle suggestions by parents and teachers can steer girls in directions outside of STEM subjects,” said Sarah Noyes, director of Diversity & Inclusion at SWAG.

On average, only 18% of computer science degree holders are women. Recent studies by U.S. researchers analyzed nearly 1.4 million Github users and found that code change suggestions made by women are more likely to be accepted on the open-source code sharing platform than those made by men, but only if...

When the World Wide Web was created in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee, its purpose was for the web technology to be available to everyone, always, without any patents or royalties. Recently, as the Internet becomes more and more centralized, the creator of the Internet and other people at its heart start calling for a revolution in order to rethink the way that Internet works.

A lot has happened in the years of Internet’s existence, but the pattern is clear: the tool that was meant to bring profound advance for liberty is too often used by governments and corporations as a means of control. Russia and UK, for example, have passed new intrusive surveillance laws, and China and Vietnam block major websites from their citizens; users are being tracked by corporations and advertisers, and their data is being sold to third parties; Internet giants like Google and Facebook yield big power over the data of all the global Internet users.

A new study from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) forecasts that smart home automation and monitoring devices will grow to over 770 million globally by 2021, representing an eleven-fold rise from just 68 million estimated in 2016.

The new research found that increasing adoption of platform evangelism and openness to partnerships is boosting third party development of devices, especially in developed markets. North America, Far East & China and West Europe will account for almost 75% of all households adopting the technology in 2021.

Juniper Research found that home automation hardware sales are rapidly outstripping subscription services, such as AT&T’s Digital Life offering. The research group forecasts that while homes adopting this payment model will increase, a one-off purchase model will see faster growth over the next five years. It found that revenues from hardware...

A new study from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) has identified smart glasses as the highest growth sector of the consumer wearables segment over the next five years, reaching 11% of the overall wearables market by 2021. Revenues are forecast to grow from $327m this year, to $9bn in 2021 as the new generation of smart glasses emerges.

The new research also found that the dominant wearables categories of smartwatches and fitness wearables, have begun to slow. They will claim just over 50% of wearables revenue by 2021, compared to an expected 75% this year, according to Juniper.

In contrast, more ambitious wearable devices, which require new modes of interaction, will bring more and better devices to consumers in the near future, notes the research group. Smart glasses are being repositioned away from their technological roots to appear more like conventional glasses; new products...

A new from IDC (www.idc.com) shows that worldwide spending on public cloud services and infrastructure will reach $122.5 billion in 2017, an increase of 24.4% over 2016.

Over the 2015-2020 forecast period, overall public cloud spending will experience a 21.5% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) – nearly seven times the rate of overall IT spending growth, according to the research group. By 2020, IDC forecasts public cloud spending will reach $203.4 billion worldwide.

Software as a Service (SaaS) will remain the dominant cloud computing type, capturing nearly two thirds of all public cloud spending in 2017 and roughly 60% in 2020. SaaS spending, which is comprised of applications and system infrastructure software (SIS), will in turn be dominated by applications purchases, which will make up more than half of all public cloud spending throughout the forecast period. However, spending on Infrastructure as a Service (...

Global revenue in the business intelligence (BI) and analytics software market is forecast to reach $18.3 billion in 2017, an increase of 7.3% from 2016, according to the latest forecast from Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com) By the end of 2020, the market is forecast to grow to $22.8 billion.

According to the research group, modern BI and analytics continues to expand more rapidly than the overall market, which is offsetting declines in traditional BI spending. The modern BI and analytics platform emerged in the last few years to meet new organizational requirements for accessibility, agility and deeper analytical insight, shifting the market from IT-led, system-of-record reporting to business-led, agile analytics including self-service.

The modern BI and analytics market is expected to decelerate, however, from 63.6% growth in 2015 to a projected 19 % by 2020. Gartner believes this reflects data and...

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the U.S. and worldwide are optimistic about the economy and confident about their future business performance, according to the inaugural American Express Global SME Pulse (business.americanexpress.com).

The new survey of senior executives and decision makers from SMEs across 15 countries reveals these businesses in the U.S. are even more optimistic about the global economy than their foreign counterparts. More than half of U.S. executives (54%, vs. 39% overall) are positive about the global economic outlook over the next 12 months. When asked to consider the local economic environment, they are even more upbeat, as nearly six in ten are positive (59% vs. 45% overall).

Executives are also confident in their ability to deliver increased revenues and profitability. More than two -thirds of the U.S. SMEs surveyed (69%, vs. 58% overall) expect significant revenue growth of at least 4 percent over the next 12 months. Forty two...

The global enterprise wearable market is expected to reach $22.3 billion by 2025, according to a new study conducted by Grand View Research (www.grandviewresearch.com)

The high demand for enterprise wearable devices in the Asia Pacific region is anticipated to drive the industry growth over the next decade, says the research group. The aging population and rising chronic diseases, such as coronary heart diseases and diabetes, in countries such as China, India, and Japan would drive the demand for wearable technology in the region.

Grand View Research says industry players are investing significantly in research and development activities for product innovation, thus catering to the specific needs of the enterprise industry. They’re using strategies such as acquisition, partnerships, and collaborations to maintain market competencies, adds the research group.
The rising enterprise...

American consumers and business owners were blasted by an estimated 2.3 billion robocalls in January, a 3% decrease over the total calls received in December but a slight increase over the same month last year. These estimates are based on the YouMail Robocall Index (https://robocallindex.com), a guide that compiles the scope and location of the worst robocalling hotspots across the country by area code.

January marked the fifth straight month that the nation's robocall volume has fallen slightly month-over-month. The country's monthly robocalling total has dropped by 14.4% over the past half-year since August 2016 – a potential sign that the robocalling trend may be stabilizing due to a growing consumer backlash and the adoption of more robo-blocking services.

YouMail provides iPhone and Android apps that serve as an automated virtual assistant to replace the mobile voicemail service of its...

A new study from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) has found that revenues from the global digital games market are set to reach the $100 billion milestone by the end of this year.

The research group found that, contrary to previous concerns, the PC market has seen reinvigoration via F2P (Free to Play) games. Coupled with the continued growth of mobile, the industry will see total revenues reach $132 billion by 2021.

Juniper found Supercell to be the clear market leader, effectively monetizing consumers through engaging games, highly rated by consumers. The research advised that publishers such as Niantic must create longevity and engagement, lest they see drop-off in terms of active users.

The outlook for the mobile industry is positive, according to Juniper. Publishers are now seeking to integrate in-game advertising. The research found that this will be most effective when...

The use of mobile apps for business is heating up with nearly 80% of companies using more than 10 apps for business, according to MobileIron (www.mobileiron.com), a company “founded on the idea that mobile apps and data would become fundamental to mobilizing business workflows.”

° Enterprise security trends for Australia and the Netherlands in addition to Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, the UK and the US;

° Specific information about healthcare and financial services industries, in addition to government,

The state of enterprise apps 79% of the organizations in MobileIron's global customer base have more than 10 enterprise apps installed. Nearly one in five organizations (18%) uses VPP to streamline enterprise app deployment to users. The...

A new study from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) has calculated that mobile network operators can realize an additional $85 billion in revenues over the next five years through the deployment and enhancement of non-core services including Big Data analytics and IoT (Internet of Things) enablement.

The new research says there is a significant opportunity for operators to move beyond connectivity provision through selling customer data to clients in both raw and packaged (analysed) forms. According to Juniper Research, operators can monetize data models including pay-per usage, metered usage and results-based fees. In turn, clients will benefit from significant cost efficiencies and/or additional value per customer, resulting in a demonstrable ROI (return on investment) on the analytics package.

The research added that for operators to maximize their monetization potential from IoT...

Production of drones for personal and commercial use is growing rapidly, with global market revenue expected to increase 34% to reach more than $6 billion in 2017 and grow to more than $11.2 billion by 2020, according to a new forecast from the Gartner, Inc (www.gartner.com) research group.

Almost three million drones will be produced in 2017, 39% more than in 2016.
While the civil markets (personal and commercial) have been wading through regulation by various governments, drones' popularity in these markets has not diminished. The overall drone market will see substantial growth, but the dynamics of the personal and commercial submarkets are very different, Gartner analysts said.

Personal drones will continue to increase in popularity as an affordable extension of consumers' smartphones for taking photographs and selfies and for other entertainment options. They can fly a short distance and time,...

Worldwide revenues for information technology (IT) products and services are forecast to reach nearly $2.4 trillion in 2017, an increase of 3.5% over 2016, according to IDC. The research group estimates that global IT spending will grow to nearly $2.65 trillion in 2020. This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.3% for the 2015-2020 forecast period.

Industry spending on IT products and services will continue to be led by financial services (banking, insurance, and securities and investment services) and manufacturing (discrete and process). Together, these industries will generate around 30% of all IT revenues throughout the forecast period as they invest in technology to advance their digital transformation efforts.

The telecommunications and professional services industries and the federal/central government are also forecast to be among the largest purchasers of IT products and services. The industries that will see the fastest spending growth over...

New research from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) forecasts that, by 2021, nearly three billion users will access retail banking services via smartphones, tablets, PCs and smartwatches, up 53% from this year.

The research group finds that usage will continue to rise as consumers increasingly opt for banks offering the convenience of rapid, multi-channel digital services. This means that banks will need to focus on providing a more frictionless digital experience to their customers, especially if they are to remain market leaders.

The new research found that while traditional banks have so far remained a step behind in delivering innovation and maintaining their competitive edge against new fintech players, the situation is gradually changing.

“Technology is currently the big differentiator for all types of banks; including traditional banks and the so-called challenger banks...

The worldwide cloud infrastructure services market grew 49% annually, reaching $10.3 billion within the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2016, according to the Canalys (www.canalys.com) research group.

AWS continued to dominate with a 33.8% global market share, while its three nearest competitors – Microsoft, Google and IBM - together accounted for 30.8% of the market. The four leading service providers were followed by Alibaba and Oracle, which made up 2.4% and 1.7% of the total. Canalys forecast the market will hit $55.8 billion in 2017, representing a 46% growth from the total value of $38.1 billion in 2016.

Continuing demand is driving the adoption of cloud infrastructure services, which accelerated the cloud data center expansion among key service providers in Q4 2016. AWS launched 11 new availability zones globally in 2016, four of which were established in Canada and the UK in this quarter. IBM also opened its...

Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com) forecasts that 8.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2017, up 31% from 2016, and will reach 20.4 billion by 2020. Total spending on endpoints and services will reach almost $2 trillion in 2017, according to the research group.

Regionally, Greater China, North America and Western Europe are driving the use of connected things and the three regions together will represent 67% of the overall Internet of Things (IoT) installed base in 2017. The consumer segment is the largest user of connected things with 5.2 billion units in 2017, which represents 63% of the overall number of applications in use. Businesses are on pace to employ 3.1 billion connected things in 2017.

"Aside from automotive systems, the applications that will be most in use by consumers will be smart TVs and digital set-top boxes, while smart electric meters and commercial security...

Global spending via mobile wallets is expected to rise by nearly 32% this year to $1.35 trillion, a new study from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) has found.

The study found that spending is currently concentrated in the Far East and China, due primarily to the success of Alipay and WeChat. However, the research says that moves by PayPal and Apple to offer wallets that can be used both in-store and online means that wallets will increasingly become the default payment mechanism in other markets.

The research highlights PayPal’s decision to introduce an HCE (Host Card Emulation) NFC solution to enable POS payments as a key disruptive moment in the wallet wars. According to Juniper Research, this – allied to the burgeoning success of its social payments subsidiary Venmo – places PayPal in pole position to capitalize on the increased demand for mobile wallets.

A new study from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) has found that a gradual change in direction for fitness wearables towards healthcare devices will lead to over 75 million Americans using dedicated activity trackers by 2021, over double the current user base.

The new research has found that this shift in focus will alter consumers’ perception of wearable trackers, making them seem more necessary. Vendors like Fitbit, Withings and Misfit are leading this change, making integration with medical databases a priority and focusing on encouraging users to lead healthier lives, rather than getting “fitter.”

Juniper Research says this will move the wearables battleground from consumer hardware to institutional partnerships and software integration; players who are able to make their devices and systems part of healthcare practices will reap the largest rewards. The research group also...

The Spy (metaphorically) pens this on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017. Those two are the most commonly misspelled and mispronounced words on the calendar. That's English for you, though. After all there are more than twenty correct pronunciations of the letter combination "ough" in English. No wonder students from other countries have such a tough time learning what we native North Americans absorb and store in our memories from infancy.

Memory and storage have come a long way from the industry's early halcyon days. Students today have never seen a punch card, have no concept of the days when "punch card machine operator" was one of the most sought after skills. The Spy was a somewhat subversive student. He persuaded the computing science department to put one punch machine in the student area, outside the sanctum of the white robed high priests who took our coding sheets, had them punched, ran the programs, and returned...

One in two wireless sensor network (WSN) adopters are using cloud infrastructure for their industrial Internet of Things development, according to a recently published survey by ON World (www.onworld.com), which provides global business intelligence on Internet of Things markets.

"Wireless sensor networks (WSN) is the key technology for connecting billions of Internet of things within the next decade," says Mareca Hatler, ON World's research director. "As early adopters of cloud-based IoT platforms, WSN users are defining industrial IoT solutions as well as picking the winners and losers."
Technologies that communicate up to one mile on average make up the majority of industrial sensor network solutions today.”

But over the next 5-10 years, the fastest growth will come from multi mile low power wide area network (LPWAN) technologies such as LoRa, Sigfox, RPMA, LTE M1 and NB1. These new wireless...

U.S. auto-safety regulators have mandated that new vehicles must communicate with each other through vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) technology beginning in 2020, with the goal of increasing safety.

Vehicles are expected to use the 5.9GHz safety spectrum, which was allocated by the Federal Government to this life-saving technology to ensure that vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications run without interference. Each vehicle would beam GPS coordinates, speed and direction data. Nearby vehicles would receive the data, analyze it with on-board computers, send safety alerts, and engage collision-avoidance systems.

“Cars are getting smarter every day,” says Avinash Salelkar, head of the Manufacturing Business Unit at global IT company Syntel. “Many new vehicles are already equipped with active systems that act in the event of an imminent collision. However, in order for tomorrow’s V2V technology to improve road safety, it is essential that it integrates...

Securecast.com, a security awareness and anti-phishing solution, has deployed a free autofill test tool with updated guidance on how to stay safe in regards to browser autofill features.

The autofill function on your browser is convenient to help complete web forms quickly but did you know that many browsers will autofill hidden fields and provide a lot more data then you may be aware of? Earlier this month a web developer and hacker published how the autofill functionality on your browser such as Google Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera and browser plugins like LastPass can be easily exploited into giving away far more data than you might intend simply by visiting a webpage.

How it works: it starts when an end user visits a phishing site that may look a lot like a trusted website or may be the result of a phishing email directing an end user to a phishing lure page. The webpage will have a simple form or text box where the end user will enter basic data such...

Over half of smartphone users spend no money on smartphone apps (paid-for downloads and in-app transactions), according to a new survey by Gartner, Inc. (www.gartner.com). However, end-user spending on in-app transactions continues to rise.

"Where users are prepared to pay for apps, spending on in-app transactions is on the rise — up 26 percent from 2015 — while spending on paid-for downloads only increased 4 percent in 2016," says Stéphanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner. In this year's survey, mean spending on in-app transactions was $11.59, while mean spending on paid-for downloads reached $7.67.

Paid-for downloads are more likely to be associated with smaller amounts of spending. Respondents who spent $15 or more over a three-month period were more likely to have done so through in-app transactions. "This is largely because the vast majority of paid-for mobile apps have a price tag of $1.99...

The future growth of the wearable technology market is expected to be driven by consumer preference for sophisticated gadgets, increasing growth prospects of next-generation displays in wearable devices, and growing popularity of Internet of Things (IoT) and connected devices, according to Markets and Markets (www.marketsandmarkets.com).

Applications such as fitness and sports, entertainment and multimedia, and garments and fashion are majorly considered under the scope of the consumer electronics vertical. The increasing demand for smart gadgets and gaming devices for interactive gaming and entertainment is driving the growth of the wearable technology market for the consumer electronics vertical, says Markets and Markets. Headwear and eyewear product segment estimated to grow at the highest rate in the wearable technology market between 2016 and 2022, according to the research group.

The global cloud computing market is poised to grow at a compound annual growth rate of around 27.5% over the next decade to reach approximately $1,250 billion by 2025, according to Research and Markets (www.researchandmarkets.com).

Some of the prominent trends that the market is witnessing include increasing applications of cloud computing solutions and expansion of global players into emerging regions, says the research group. Based on deployment the market is categorized into public cloud, community cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud. Depending on the service the market is segmented by platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as service (IaaS) and software as a service (SaaS).

This Research and Markets report analyzes the market estimates and forecasts for all the given segments on global as well as regional levels presented in the research scope. The study provides...

The global smartphone production volume for 2016 grew 4.7% annually to reach 1.36 billion units in total, according to market research firm TrendForce (www.trendforce.com).

Samsung continued to top the annual global ranking despite the discontinuation of Galaxy Note 7, suffering a marginal decline of 3.3% compared with the 2015 figure. Chinese brands Huawei, OPPO and Vivo respectively occupied the last three spots in the global top five and followed closely behind the second-place Apple.

Samsung had a difficult 2016 in the smartphone market and the company did not achieve its annual shipment target due to the fallout from the battery defect in Galaxy Note 7. Samsung’s global market share also contracted steadily, from 28% in 2014 to 25% in 2015 and then to 23% by the end of 2016. Much of the market share loss was attributed to the stiff competition from Chinese brands across all market segments, from...

DevOps, a philosophy emphasizing collaboration and efficiency among software development and operations teams, still lacks a widely agreed upon definition despite being broadly recognized among IT professionals, according to a new survey report by Clutch (https://clutch.co/), a B2B ratings and reviews firm.

Clutch asked respondents to pick the definition that best characterizes DevOps from four unique options published by Wikipedia, Rackspace, Amazon Web Services, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. While Wikipedia's definition secured the largest percentage at 35%, no definition earned a majority.

Wikipedia's definition states, "DevOps… is a culture, movement or practice that emphasizes the collaboration and communication of both software developers and other [IT] professionals while automating the process of software delivery and infrastructure changes."

A recent survey conducted by International Data Corporation (IDC) finds that a whopping 84% of U.S. consumers expressed concern regarding the security of their personally identifiable information (PII) and 70% told IDC (www.idc.com) that their concern is greater today than just a few years ago.

The newly published special study, which measures consumer privacy sentiment across four vertical industries (Financial Services, Healthcare, Retail, and Government), also includes the following key findings:

° Younger consumers, those age 18-35, demonstrate a higher concern for their personally identifiable information than do their 36-50 year-old counterparts.

° Hyper awareness and growing sensitivity toward data exposure appear to have consumers on the verge of making serious changes in their behavior.

"The dawn of Digital Transformation has already affected the relationship between individuals and...

Today's typical business intelligence (BI) user increasingly prioritizes mobile, fast, and customizable platform options, and platform providers are feeling the pressure to evolve quickly to meet the demand from customers.

A new survey from Clutch (www.clutch.co), a B2B ratings and reviews firm, finds that 70% of data analytics users consider a mobile application crucial to their use of BI software. Even those users who said they don't consider a mobile application crucial have taken notice; nearly 60% of those users said they recognize mobile BI applications as increasingly important to their business.

User emphasis on mobility has grown significantly in a short amount of time. Clutch's 2016 BI survey found that only 41% of data analytics users even used a mobile phone or tablet to access their BI data—now almost double that number believe mobility is crucial to their use of the software.

New data from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) has found that the consumer IoT (Internet of Things) installed base will reach over 15 billion units by 2021, an increase of 120% over 2016.

As evidenced at the CES show earlier this month, embedded connectivity is increasingly being used as a product differentiator. Juniper cautioned that the vast scale of this connectivity will, unless action is taken, lead to an unmanageable cybersecurity risk created by botnets in excess of one million units.

Juniper’s latest research found that recent IoT botnets will prove merely to be the tip of the cybersecurity iceberg. Botnets were uncovered as a key factor in the largest DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack ever recorded last year.

The report found that the use of botnets to disrupt Internet services form part of the near-term threat landscape. It predicted that botnets will be...

The global market for smart wearables is projected to cross US$30 billion by 2020, according to a new report from Research and Markets (www.researchandmarkets.com).

Initially, the adoption of these devices was confined to developed countries because of the high cost. However, with the decline in cost, vendors have shifted their focus to developing countries to increase their revenue and market base, according to the research group.

The factors like growing IT spending, rising health concerns, growing popularity of smart wearables among consumers, an expanding smartphone user base globally, coupled with continuously declining prices of smart wearables are anticipated to propel demand for different types of smart wearables during the over the next six years. According to Research and Markets:

American consumers and businesses were overwhelmed by an estimated 29.3 billion robocalls in 2016, based on the YouMail Robocall Index (www.robocallindex.com), the nation's first guide that compiles the scope and location of the worst robocalling hotspots across the country by area code.

This news marks the first time that any source has tracked the nation's collective robocall problem over an entire calendar year. In 2016:

° U.S. phones were inundated by an estimated 2.4 billion monthly robocalls, which equals 79.6 million daily robocalls on average, or 921 robocalls for every second of the year.

° Five major cities were blitzed by more than one billion robocalls each, including Atlanta, Dallas, New York, Chicago and Houston.

° The 15 most egregious robocalling numbers for the year were controlled by debt collectors for banks, phone companies, cable firms or retailers.

The Temkin Group (www.TempkinGroup.com) has published its annual “Product and Relationship Satisfaction of IT Clients,” which rates 62 technology vendors based on feedback from 800 IT decision makers within large North American organizations.

At the top of the ratings, six tech vendors earned average satisfaction levels of 70% or more across the eight areas: HPE outsourcing (76%), Google (75%), IBM SPSS (75%), IBM software (73%), IBM outsourcing (70%), and Dell outsourcing (70%). At the bottom of the ratings, five vendors earned average satisfaction levels below 50%: Trend Micro (42%), Infosys (46%), SunGard (47%), Pitney Bowes (48%), and Cognizant (49%).

"Large enterprises depend a lot on all of these tech vendors, but there's a wide gap in how effectively the vendors meet the needs of their customers," states Bruce Temkin, managing partner of Temkin Group.

According to IDC (www.idc.com), vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew by 8.1% year over year to US$8.4 billion in the third quarter of 2016 (3Q16). Ethernet switch continues to be the growth leader, as the market awaits new hyperscale datacenter builds to spur additional growth.

The overall share of cloud IT infrastructure sales climbed to 39.2% of all IT infrastructure spending in 3Q16, up from 34.7% a year ago. Revenue from infrastructure sales to private cloud grew by 8.2% to $3.3 billion, and to public cloud by 8.0% to $5.1 billion. In comparison, revenue in the traditional (non-cloud) IT infrastructure segment decreased 10.8% year over year in the third quarter.

Private cloud infrastructure growth was led by Ethernet switch at 60.8% year-over-year growth, followed by storage at 9.0%, and server at 3.2...

Transparency Market Research (www.transparencymarketresearch.com) predicts that the leading players operating in the global smart medical devices market held a huge share of 43% in 2015. Apple, F.Hoffmann-La Roche, and Abbott Laboratories have been frontrunners in the overall market, grabbing the undivided attention of buyers with their sophisticated products, according to the research group.

High brand recognition, growing presence across geographies, and strong product portfolio is expected to keep these companies in the lead in the coming few years.
The research report states that the global smart medical devices will be worth U.S.$66.1 billion by 2024 as compared to $33.7 billion in 2015. Between the forecast period of 2016 and 2024, the global market is expected to rise at a CAGR [compound annual growth rate] of 7.8%.

Worldwide semiconductor capital spending is projected to increase 2.9% in 2017, to $69.9 billion, according to Gartner (www.gartner.com). This is down from 5.1% growth in 2016.

"The stronger growth in 2016 was fueled by Increased spending in late 2016 which can be attributed to a NAND flash shortage which was more severe in late 2016 and will persist though most of 2017. This is due to a better-than-expected market for smartphones, which is driving an upgrade of NAND spending in our latest forecast," said David Christensen, senior research analyst at Gartner. "NAND spending increased by $3.1 billion in 2016 and several related wafer fab equipment segments showed stronger growth than our previous forecast. The thermal, track and implant segments in 2017 are expected to increase 2.5%, 5.6% and 8.4%, respectively.

Compared with early 2016, the semiconductor outlook has improved, particularly in memory, due to...

A new report published by Allied Market Research (www.alliedmarketresearch.com) projects that the global home entertainment devices market is expected to reach US$294,969 million by 2022. Video devices is estimated to be the most dominant product type in the market from 2015 to 2022.

Home entertainment devices market includes products and systems that are used in domestic or personal context. The market includes several consumer electronic products such as television sets, video players and recorders, audio equipment, and gaming devices. Over the past few years, there is a significant rise in consumer investments in entertainment products mainly owing to the increase in disposable income and development of innovative entertainment solutions from manufacturers, according to Allied Market Research.

Factors that drive the market are increase in product bundling by vendors, increase in...

Worldwide spending on robotics and related services will more than double by 2020, growing from $91.5 billion in 2016 to more than $188 billion in 2020, according to the newly updated “Worldwide Commercial Robotics Spending Guide” from International Data Corporation (IDC).

In addition to spending data on robotic systems, system hardware, software, robotics-related services, and after-market robotics hardware, the robotics spending guide now includes data on commercial purchase of drones and after-market drone hardware.

"The market for robotics continues to experience tremendous growth," said John Santagate, research manager, Supply Chain at IDC Manufacturing Insights. "This growth is really fueled by a combination of technology improvements, expanded use cases, and acceptance in the market. Innovators in the field of robotics are delivering robots that can be used to perform a broader range of tasks, which is helping to drive the adoption of robotics into a wider...

New data from Juniper Research (www.junipereesearch.com) shows that revenues from smart home hardware and services will reach US$83 billion this year, rising to $195 billion by 2021. This will be generated through entertainment, automation, healthcare and connected devices, according to the research group.

The new research found that home automation and smart appliances will be the two fastest growing segments over the next five years, driven by established manufacturers such as Samsung, Bosch and GE Appliances. The research found that market leaders Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Samsung will further solidify their position by building on current assets such their cloud services and incumbent device bases. Juniper has ranked these companies on product development, breadth of partnerships in the industry, success of their adopted business model, and level of innovation.

Worldwide purchases of 3D printers, materials, software, and related services are expected to total $13.2 billion in 2016. According to a recent report by International Data Corporation (IDC), global spending on 3D printing will experience a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.3% with revenues reaching $28.9 billion in 2020.

The United States will deliver roughly a quarter of worldwide 3D printing revenues throughout the 2015-2020 forecast period while the next three largest regions – Western Europe, Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan), and Japan – combined will deliver more than 50% of total revenues, according to IDC (www.idc.com). While the fastest growth will come from the Middle East and Africa (MEA) and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) regions, Western Europe's strong growth will significantly close the revenue gap with the United States by 2020. In fact, five of the eight geographic regions covered in the...

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